


Come As You Are

by jesuschristmarie



Category: Better Call Saul (TV), Breaking Bad
Genre: Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Language, They cry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 00:18:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5353718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesuschristmarie/pseuds/jesuschristmarie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saul Goodman, now going by Jimmy McGill, is working at an alien-themed shop in the middle of nowhere, Nevada until an expected tourist arrives and changes everything.</p>
<p>"Come as you are, as you were/ As I want you to be/ As a friend, as a friend/ As an old enemy" -Nirvana</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

            With each beep of the scanner, Jimmy McGill rung up another pound of alien jerky. Jesus, this guy was buying twenty-three pounds.

            “You from out of town?” Jimmy asked, though the question was moot. There were no other buildings around for about thirty miles, and the Alien Pitstop was exactly that—a quick stopping point on a stretch of flat highway. There was a Dairy Queen five miles due east. When Jimmy got tired of jerky and water he’d go there sometimes, order a Blizzard and fries and kick back in one of the plastic booths while the sun went down along the flat horizon.

            “California,” the guy said. He probably had a vanload of Cheeto-crumb kids waiting in the parking lot.

            If the word didn’t fill him with such utter derision, Jimmy might’ve asked the guy where he was headed. As it was, he just asked for two hundred and twenty-eight dollars in cash. Credit cards not accepted, sorry for the inconvenience.

            Jimmy was in an especially foul mood not because he pined after palm trees and celebrity-strewn beaches, but because he had to lead a night hike in about seven hours. Once a month he was tasked with taking a bunch of flash photography happy UFO nuts out in the middle of the night in hopes of seeing extraterrestrials beam themselves in from the distant reaches of outer space. The bullshit tour lasted about an hour, and Jimmy’s boss would direct a high-power laser beam into the sky near the end to give folks their money’s worth. Otherwise, it was thirty-five dollars a head just to listen to Jimmy spout a few note cards worth of bogus evidence and even a personal testimony that the shop owner had drafted up for him. It didn’t matter. Jimmy thought he was pretty good at selling the whole show. He didn’t let himself consider just how desperate for proof the flocks of fanatics were. Hell, they’d probably cram _him_ into a test tube and cart him off if he told them he was an alien.

            Once the sun went down, he had some time to pick up dinner at DQ and chat with his favorite cashier, Alfredo. As he rumbled past Joshua trees, the sky lit up with the final dregs of daylight. Maybe it could seem pretty, if you were able to see past the hollowed-out crackhouses and trash dumps littering the cracked earth. Even then, you’d probably still recognize yourself as being trapped in hell.

            Jimmy wasn’t unused to this feeling. He needed a vacation. But as he thought it, he cast a glace around his half-gutted car—the fraying seats, pilled commercial carpet covering the dash—and had to let out a mirthless chuckle. He needed a new car, a new job, a new life. A vacation was low on the old priority list.

            “There’s The Man!”

            God, what a relief. All day he was a nobody with a shit job and a secret past, but at DQ he was The Man. He saw that Alfredo was already typing his usual order into the register and he grinned.

            “And don’t try to tell me it’s on the house. I’ve got a busload of alien nuts coming in about an hour, and they’re all gonna pay me to tell them that their otherworldly obsessions aren’t a load of crap.”

            “Nevada’s Number One Bullshitter.”

            Jimmy liked it. He added that right up there next to The Man and handed over a ten.

            “Keep the change. I’ll be at my table.”

            The restaurant was nearly empty. Jimmy took a seat at one of the booths, his elbow sticking a little to the table. There were napkins, but he didn’t bother wiping it down. His order only took about two minutes, and added to the three minutes it took him to eat it, he’d be back on the road in five.

            “Number 23!”

            Jimmy glanced around the restaurant as he approached the counter. “Seeing as no one else is jumping up, I guess I’ll take it.”

            “Added a few extra fries, as usual.”

            “And as usual, I don’t need extra.” He gestured to his frame, unchanged after so many years, and took the tray from Alfredo. “But I’ll eat them anyway. What’s a few extra pounds? I hear women like their men chunkier these days.”

            Alfredo just shook his head, chuckling. Jimmy sat down and dug in systematically. Burger first, then fries. Use ketchup and mustard that dripped off burger onto fries. Wash it all down with Coke, then refill Coke and take that to go. He’d need the caffeine—Christ, he’d need a couple Vicodin to slog through another scripted evening. What’s that, ma’am? Oh no, not a star. See how it’s moving? Oh, you can’t see it moving? Well, maybe you shouldn’t have left your fucking glasses on the goddamned bus. Of course it’s a UFO, isn’t that what you paid thirty-five dollars to see?

            He sat in the darkening parking lot with a flashlight. It cast a sickly green beam through a piece of tinted film, and he was supposed to wave it at passing cars in case any of them were looking for the tour. He didn’t wave it anymore. It hung limp at his side until a bus swung into the parking lot, taking up all the spots. He switched the flashlight off and hung his head a little, allowing himself an extra moment before he went to greet them with a big, “Are you ready to see something out of this world!” He heard the doors hiss open.

            “It’s showtime,” he whispered.

            This was one of the larger groups he’d taken out. In from San Francisco and en route to Vegas, he noticed the mingling of accents and languages as soon as people started off the bus.

            “I’m ready to catch an alien and take him to Vegas with us!” a man said.

            “Oh, he’d be a whiz at blackjack I’m sure!”

            Jimmy just wanted to go home. Once it seemed like everyone was off the bus, he began in a monotone much unlike his usual voice:

            “Tonight, you’ve all come to explore the final frontier right here on planet earth. But don’t take it from me—we have sightings here almost every week, so trust your vision. Learn to believe what you see. Any questions before we start?”

            A few hands went up. Geez.

            “Let’s just start, yo! Ask the questions after the tour starts—if I’m gonna have enough money to blow in Vegas, I need to get a UFO picture, like, _now_.”

            Jimmy tightened his hand around the flashlight. For a moment he thought he knew that voice, but he dismissed it as mere longing. Leave a man out in the desert with no one for company but a bunch of aliens and he’d start hearing things. It was basic psychology.

            The hands went down, though, so Jimmy was grateful. The guy who’d spoken was somewhere toward the back of the group, but it seemed like everyone on the bus was used to him. They glanced at each other and giggled a little, so Jimmy shone his flashlight toward the trail.

            “Let the trek begin!”

***

            They walked for about twenty minutes before the first question: “Have _you_ seen any aliens out here?”

            Jimmy mostly stuck to fabled stories about other people. It seemed fine to tell fictions about John Doe seeing a triangular-shaped UFO just last week, but pretending that he’d seen the same felt shakier. Not quite immoral—the whole evening was a big sham—but still wrong.

            “Yep! I have pictures back in the shop if you want to take a look.” Stock images, all of them. Framed copies available for only $25 plus tax. “Really a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Something you never forget.”

            Was he being convincing? Sure, these fools wanted to believe. They were like a court full of jurors already set on a conviction.

            “Our most famous sighting took place in 2005.” Long before he started at the Alien Pitstop. “Woman by the name of Alice Shuster claims that aliens abducted and performed tests on her, but not before she was able to take some pictures of their crafts. We have a copy back at the shop if anyone is interested. Alice later disappeared—hard to say if she went into hiding or if they came back for her. My money’s on the latter.”

            A murmur rippled through the group, spreading out like he’d dropped a stone in the middle of a puddle. That’s right. He allowed himself a brief moment of satisfaction at the crowd’s response, then clicked on his green light and stood to one side of the trail, shining it on a rock.

            “Watch your step over this, folks. Just keep following the path. I see some of you brought your own lights, good. I’ll bring up the rear. Just keep it up, we’re gonna make it to the top of that hill before turning around. Great vantage, up there. On a clear night you can see the lights of Sin City!”

            He kept talking as they continued to stream by, trying to give them their thirty-five dollars worth of uninterrupted commentary. Not that they seemed to care. He could probably start reciting his grocery list—white bread, a six-pack, some fish food for Scout, his betta—and they’d just keep hiking. He noticed headphones stuck into the ears of someone who passed and trailed off, realizing his words were meaningless.

            “Saul?”

            Almost without meaning to, Jimmy swung the ghoulish beam of his flashlight up and shined it in the direction his name had come from. The startled face of Jesse Pinkman squinted in the sudden glow, and he threw a hand up over his eyes. Jimmy closed his own eyes, opened them. He saw the tattoo curling through the soft hairs of Jesse’s wrist and coming to several points on the back of his hand.

            “Yo, can you put that thing down?”

            Jimmy did, slowly, afraid that Jesse’s face would vanish into the darkness when he did.

            “You trying to burn my retinas out, man?”

            “I—uh, sorry. They say you’re supposed to train your light on an alien’s face so they don’t abduct you. Something about it being disorienting.”

            “So you thought I was an alien?” Jimmy could tell that Jesse was trying to sound mad, but the effect was ruined by a wide grin that had spread across his features. It was luminous in the dark, glowing pearl in the watery green from Jimmy’s flashlight. He found himself smiling back, and resisted the urge to trail his fingers across the unfamiliar formation of his lips. How long had it been since he smiled and truly meant it?

            “Don’t you have a, like, tour or something?” Jesse gestured ahead. The group hadn’t stopped hiking, forging ahead toward the crest of the hill.

            “Oh, them? They don’t need me.” He said it jokingly, though he felt the truth of it resonate within him. “If I let them get lost, it’ll probably improve their chances finding grays.” He started after them, though, and Jesse followed. “Watch the rocks,” Jimmy warned, turning his light behind him so that Jesse would see the flaws in the trail before tripping headfirst.

            “Thanks, I got it,” Jesse mumbled, intent on watching where he was stepping. Jimmy let the light linger a moment longer than necessary, watching the way Jesse’s forehead creased when he was particularly intent on avoiding a plant.

            “You can step on the plants,” he said. “They won’t trip you.”

            “I’m not gonna step on the plants. They were here first.”

            Jimmy swung the light back around, but not soon enough. He felt his foot catch on the edge of a rock he’d avoided countless times on the same tour. Now he fell forward, flashlight smashing against the ground and flickering out. He caught himself with his hands before his face collided with hard-packed dirt, but his knees hit hard and he could feel syrupy blood begin to pool against his jeans.

            “Saul!” Jesse was beside him. Jimmy could feel concern in the palms of Jesse’s hands pressed against his shoulders. How embarrassing.

            “I’m fine,” Jimmy muttered, the words slipping between the cracks in his clenched teeth. “Occupational hazard. We don’t want to lose the group.”

            “Fuck the group.” Jesse stood up, and for a wild moment Jimmy thought he might continue on without him. Then he heard, “Yo, yeah, all of you! Our guide got hurt helping me with something and I’m taking him back to the parking lot, so you just keep going!” He ducked down. “How far should they go before turning around?”

            “Just to the top of the hill, then back down.”

            “Turn around at the top of the hill and come back!”

            “What should we be looking for?” a man’s voice shouted back, sounding a little panicked.

            “Aliens, bitch!”

            “But what if we don’t know what they look like? We need our guide!”

            “Tell them to look for lights,” Jimmy said.

            “Look for lights!”

            Jimmy could hear some dissention amongst the alien hunters, but they were lost on his ears because Jesse had crouched down and was whispering, “Do you think you can stand?”

            “Oh, yeah. I’m just lying here for show—it really doesn’t hurt that bad.”

            “I’ll still help you, old man. I don’t see one of those ‘help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up’ bracelets on your wrist, so I’m thinking you need me.”

            Jimmy wanted to argue, but the younger man was tugging at him and it took all of his energy to stand without groaning aloud.

            “At least we didn’t walk far,” Jimmy muttered sarcastically. The curtained windows of the Alien Pitstop glowed dully, the distance greater than he wanted to think about. God, what if he walked with a limp? No, he could walk normally. One foot forward and, shit, that hurt.

            “Here, just lean on me.” Jesse’s hand tightened on his shoulder.

            Jimmy reluctantly shifted his weight so that Jesse bore the brunt of his injury. The younger man didn’t complain as they made their halting way back to the parking lot. Jimmy reflected on the quiet that settled over them, how immediately comfortable it was. Surely Jesse didn’t feel the same. On his way to Vegas, the kid was probably getting ready to let loose. How pathetic was it, Jimmy thought, to be reveling in these moments shared between them when Jesse was probably envisioning the women he’d meet in the city. A part of him _hoped_ that Jesse was thinking about the people waiting for him in Vegas—he didn’t think he’d have the stomach to handle knowing that Jesse had ever experienced a loneliness as consuming as his.

            “You really seen aliens out here?”

            “What do you think, kid?”

            “You’re a good liar, but it was bullshit. All that ‘something you never forget’ crap? Didn’t sound like what Saul Goodman would say if he’d really seen something.”

            “I’m really that transparent to you, huh? I’ll have you know people around these parts call me ‘Nevada’s Number One Bullshitter.’”

            “Like that means anything. Nevada has, like, no population. More cactuses than people.”

            “That something you learned on the Discovery Channel?”

            “It’s real, yo. This state is nothing but Vegas.”

            Jimmy wanted to counter, but with what? Even Nevada’s Number One Bullshitter couldn’t call the Dairy Queen fine cuisine or the crumbling drug houses quaint.

            “So are you living in San Francisco now?”

            “No—why?”

            “Thought the tour bus was direct from SFO.”

            “Flew there from Seattle this morning. I could’ve flown to Vegas direct, but the tour was cheap and then you, like, see the sights and stuff.”

            “Ah, of course, so many sights to see between there and here. This stretch of highway is a real yellow brick road.”

            “It’s mostly an alien tour, so, yeah, there’s lots of stops.”

            “If I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t take you for the type to think ‘the truth is out there.’”

            “And I didn’t take you for the type to be a judgmental dick. Why are you even here if you don’t believe all this stuff?”

            “I’ve been a few places, but I thought it seemed safest out here.” He expected Jesse to laugh, say there was no reason for Jimmy to still be watching his back.

            “I get it. Even up in Oregon I’m always checking over my shoulder. Last week, I thought some guy was following me to a bookstore and I ducked into a restaurant to avoid him. He went into an ice cream shop a couple blocks down and met his kid for cones.”

            “You were going to a _bookstore_?”

            “Dude, not cool. I just shared my paranoia with you.”

            Jimmy felt bad for joking with the kid—it mostly felt like a knee-jerk reaction, something he did because he worried that without his bravado, he wasn’t enough.

            “The side door is always unlocked,” Jimmy said as they reached the Alien Pitstop. “Perks of being in the middle of nowhere.”

            They hobbled inside and Jimmy lowered himself onto a couch.

            “Lights are to the left of the door,” he said, exhaling through the pain.

            Jesse hit them and Jimmy’s small office was flooded with light. There was no desk, just a few boxes of surplus from the shop and the tweed couch.

            “Wait, do you, like, _live_ here?”

            Jimmy looked down, as if he hadn’t realized the couch was made up like a bed, a square of red fleece blanket tucked in at one end and a flat white pillow at the other.

            “No, I’ve got an apartment in town. Sometimes I don’t feel like going home at the end of the day, so I keep the couch made in case. Besides, here I’ve got company.” He gestured to the clear fishbowl stacked on top of a sturdy wooden crate. His situation was definitely as sad as it looked, and he lowered his head a little to avoid the kid’s no-doubt pitying gaze.

            “Cool. Bettas are dope, yo.”

            Jimmy looked up. “Ever had one?”

            “No.” Jesse rubbed at the back of his neck for a moment before dropping his hand. He crouched so that his eyes were level with the fish. “Parents never thought I was responsible enough—thought I’d kill it, or some shit like that.”

            “Want to feed him?”

            “Dude, yeah! What’s his name?”

            “Scout.” Jimmy reached for the fish food from his spot on the couch. “Here, just take a pinch and drop it in the water. He’s a greedy son of a bitch, so no more than a pinch or he might get on that bus and follow you to Vegas.”

            Vegas. Jimmy felt a cloud wring itself out over him as he thought about Jesse leaving. Just watching the kid tentatively reach into the bottle and drop a few flakes into the water made him wish that the visit would last much longer than a few more minutes.

            “He’s coming up to the surface!” Jesse reported, his excitement palpable.

            “He does that.” Jimmy could help laughing as Jesse watched Scout eat the flakes. The younger man was mesmerized, like he was watching a Shark Week special instead of Jimmy’s lethargic betta fish scoop a few morsels into its mouth. His smile faded when he heard the quiet hum of a bus engine through the closed door and the sounds of people milling outside.

            “Sounds like your chariot awaits. Tell all the ladies you meet that Saul Goodman sends his regards, will you? They’ll remember me for many reasons, I’m sure.”

            “Gross, man.” Jesse capped the fish food and stood up. Without another word to Jimmy, he opened the side door and stepped outside. As it closed behind him, Jimmy felt the “Don’t leave!” fully formed in his throat, but his mouth couldn’t open. He’d never see the kid again, and something about the finality of this felt impossible for him to bear.

            He shoved the pillow onto the ground and curled against the side of the couch, hugging his bloodied knees. His back arched, the pressure that had built up between his vertebrae popping as he let his face bury into the itchy tweed of the couch. He deserved to be miserable, to be punished for all that he’d done. The universe only supplied his encounter with Jesse to remind him that no one—not even someone from his old life—wanted to know him. He was, would always be, alone.

            He was pinching tears away with hard blinks when the side door reopened.

            “You okay, Saul?”

            Jesse—no, he was hallucinating now. There was no voice, the room was empty beside him and Scout. But there were footsteps, the sound of a bag being tossed carelessly to the ground, weight compressing the springs of the couch, a hand on his shoulder. He choked, and the tears threatened again, but this time for a different reason. He looked up at Jesse’s worried face and half-smiled.

            “I’m okay.”

***

            The waffle iron was stamped with an ovular alien face, but other than that it was perfectly normal. Jimmy had taken it off one of the shelves in the store, telling himself he’d clean it off and replace it right after he made Jesse some out of this world waffles. Come on, the kid had passed up a week of partying in Vegas just to spend a few days with his old lawyer. If Jimmy had to pay the owner for the waffle iron, he’d do it. Jesse deserved some green-hued waffles after spending a night on the commercial carpet of his office floor.

            Jimmy tore open a bag of mix, marveling at the noxious color of the powder. It was a top seller, along with the dyed-green chocolate bars. He mixed in some water and poured it onto the waffle iron once it heated up.

            The shop began to smell like an off-ramp diner, one of those little places you eat at right off the highway with questionable menu items. Jimmy was glad the store didn’t open until ten. If it opened any earlier, he’d have probably just neglected to unlock the front doors until he was done making Jesse’s breakfast. He didn’t even think about his own wanting stomach as he plated the waffle on a paper towel and poured a little green syrup over the top.

            “Rise and shine, Master Pinkman.” He reentered the office and saw that Jesse was already awake. Hunched against the crate, the kid was watching Scout sleep. The betta hung in the water, the kaleidoscopic tendrils of his fins fanning out as he drifted. How could Jesse look at the fish with such wonder? Jimmy thought Scout was cool—he’d specifically picked the red and blue one at the store—but he was just a fish.

            “What’s that?”

            “Waffle. I, uh, thought you might be jonesing for something substantial after a night on my floor. Not that my floor doesn’t compare to the Four Seasons—that sheet I gave you has a high thread count.”

            “Hell yeah, man. I eat waffles, like, _daily_.”

            “Good. Well, this one’s green. Another occupational hazard, I guess.” He handed the waffle to Jesse, a little shy because the toasty brown edges looked a little unappetizing set against pale green. Jesse began eating it without hesitation.

            “So what’re we doing today?” Jesse asked through a mouthful.

            “Shop’s open from ten till five, so I’m here all day. You can go explore, find some UFOs, try not to get abducted. That should keep you busy.”

            “Can you give me, I dunno, like a map or something? Show me where the good spots are?”

            “I can try, kid. I can’t say I don’t appreciate your adventurous spirit, but you know how jaded I am about this whole enterprise. Been here two years and I’ve never seen anything I’d classify as ‘unidentifiable.’ Well, unless I’m looking down in the toilet after I’ve eaten a few too many of our neon-green candy bars.”

            “You could hold the testimonials until _after_ I’ve eaten.” Even as Jesse said this, he continued eating. Jimmy went to clean up his cooking area while the younger man finished breakfast. He almost boxed up the waffle iron and replaced it on the shelf, but something stopped him. Maybe he’d need it again someday.

            He stuffed the box behind the counter and found a couple maps to loan to Jesse. He pulled one clean off the wall, unpinning it from its usual spot next to the front door. It was the best map in the entire store, with highlighted paths and circled landmarks that would guarantee Jesse not getting lost.

            “Here, this should make a pretty good starter kit. Apparently these are some local hotspots—guy I know at Dairy Queen swears by Devil’s Rock to the west.”

            “Can I take these with me?”

            “Course. You’ll need a water bottle too—we have some cold ones up front. And some granola bars.”

            “Thanks, Mom.” Jesse flashed a grin up at him and scratched his head a little as he looked down at the maps.

            “Hey, if you want to go out there unprepared, be my guest. You’ll drop like a fly—it’s like the goddamn Sahara out there.”

            “Better send out a search party if I don’t come back.”

            “You don’t come back and every alien fanatic west of Vegas is gonna be citing it as the most recent abduction case.”

            Jimmy decided he didn’t like even considering the possibility of Jesse being beamed up to some distant planet. He didn’t need to believe in aliens to worry about Jesse deciding he’d had enough of Jimmy’s sad life. Even though their arrangement was only for a few days, Jimmy wanted to imagine it was longer than that. Forget the shop, Jimmy would follow Jesse anywhere if it’d mean the company of the only person who truly understood him—flaws and all. Anything to not be alone anymore.

            After Jesse left, pockets full of enough granola bars to keep a small army alive for days at Jimmy’s insistence, he pulled on his Alien Pitstop t-shirt and changed into clean jeans. His knees had clotted over, silver dollar-sized patches of crusted blood reminding him of the events of last night. He hardly remembered hurting after Jesse came back and dropped his duffel on the floor.

            When Jesse returned that evening, his pockets were empty and he reported seeing nothing but a couple scorpions.

            “Nevada sucks, yo.”

            “Says the kid who paid for a plane ticket and bus tour just to get here.” Jimmy grinned.

            Jesse slumped down on the couch and his eyes drifted sleepily shut. Jimmy was about to pronounce the kid sound asleep when he heard, “Hey, so I was, uh, wondering about something.”

            “Oh, yeah?” Jimmy kept his voice casual.

            “Would you want to come back to Seattle with me? Like, just for a couple weeks or whatever. I could show you around and stuff.”

            Jimmy shrugged like he had to think about the invitation. “I’d have to get someone to watch Scout and check with the boss if he can give me that kind of time of right now. It’s tourist season, you know.”

            They were Seattle-bound the next day.


	2. Chapter 2

            “Two tickets,” Jesse said. Jimmy stood a step forward, wallet already in hand. The kid wouldn’t tell him where they were, just that he was going to like whatever it was. The Space Needle towered overhead, and it took all his efforts to avoid gawking up at it like a tacky tourist. He was grateful for the black down jacket Jesse had loaned him. Paired with jeans, he looked just about as Pacific Northwestern as every other guy who walked by. He definitely didn’t hail from Nevada, no siree.

            “How much?” Jimmy said, pulling a twenty from his wallet.

            “I got this, man.” Jesse waved him away and paid for both tickets. “It’s, like, a welcome to Seattle present.”

            “I’ll need all the welcoming you can give, considering the consistency of rain here. How many times have you seen the sun while you’ve lived in this city—once? But then you realized it was just light reflecting off a building, right? Not the actual sun.”

            “Don’t hate on rain, yo. Keeps shit _green_. You wanna know where’s sunny?”

            “Let me guess: The place you vacation with enough frequency to combat seasonal depression.”

            “Nevada. Nevada’s sunny,” Jesse continued as if he hadn’t heard Jimmy. “And guess what? It’s fucking ugly.”

            Jimmy tucked his hands into his pockets as Jesse handed their tickets over. The building was huge, with twisted, multicolored walls and sides that looked like melted wax. What was this place?

            “If this is some kind of kinky sex palace, I’m outta here.”

            “Dude, we’re not gonna go out in public together again if you say things like that.”

            Jimmy felt his cheeks warm a little at the words, “go out.” Christ, he needed to get a grip. The kid pulled his beanie off, running a hand through his hair and looking up at the ceiling. Jimmy wanted to look up too, but he was caught off-guard by Jesse’s gaze. How could Jesse observe with such innocent wonder after all the shit he’d been put through? Jimmy balled his hands into fists to stop himself from reaching out and taking Jesse’s hand into his own. He couldn’t change the comfortable, teasing atmosphere between them. The constant cover of clouds? Yeah, Jimmy fucking loved it. He only used witty rapport to undercut the true feelings he had for Seattle—feelings so immediate and strong, they practically bowled him over. Everything here was wrapped in gossamer thread, warm and incandescent with Jesse was around.

            “C’mon,” Jesse said, a little shy. “I wanna show you something cool.”

            Jimmy smiled.

            “Lead the way, kid.”

            The building was concrete and metal, with curving passages and dim lighting. As they wandered deeper into the building, Jimmy tried to picture what Jesse might be showing him.

            “Here.”

            Jimmy was about to ask what he was looking at, then his jaw went a little slack.

            “Jimi Hendrix’s guitar?” he asked, his voice reverent.

            “Yeah, it’s even, like, signed and everything.”

            “You’ll rarely find me at a loss for words, but I think ‘speechless’ about sums it up.”

            “Do you, uh, want a picture in front of it?” Jesse shrugged. “Or whatever, it’s cool if you don’t.”

            “I’ll never pass up a chance to give this mug some much-deserved attention. Snap away.”

            Jesse rolled his eyes and dug his phone out of an overlarge jean pocket.

            “Stand closer, man, and don’t look like you’re afraid of it.”

            “Can I make it look like I’m playing it? There.” He held his hands up to make it look like they were on the guitar. “Do I look like a rock god?”

            “One of the washed up kinds. You know, popular, like, fifty years ago.”

            “That’d make me the king of rock n’ roll. I’ll take it as a compliment.”

            Jesse held the phone up and squinted.

            “Yo, it doesn’t look like you’re actually playing. The angle’s all weird.”

            “It’s grunge kid, you wouldn’t get it. Just take the fucking picture.”

            Jesse did, and then they forged ahead to a room full of instruments, all tuned up and performance ready. Jimmy opened the door to one of the soundbooths. He’d never seen a museum as dedicated to rock music as this one was.

            “Ready to be blown away?” he asked as Jesse walked in and took a seat behind the drum kit.

            “Like you even play.” Jesse picked the drumsticks up and tried twirling one. “Shit,” he said as it fell. He blushed a little at the clumsy attempt and ducked to pick it up.

            “I think I know the riff to one or two classic Zeppelin songs.”

            Jimmy picked up a Stratocaster and slung the strap over his shoulder. Running his fingers along the frets, he picked a few notes. Jesse started clicking the sticks against the cymbal, the muscles under his tattoo dancing as the cadence got faster. Jimmy had to look away, focus on the guitar. What could he play?

            “I know this one!” Jesse tapped a drumstick against the snare as he tried to remember the name. “What’s it called? It’s like ‘Elevator to Heaven,’ or something.”

            “I know you’re kidding, but another joke like that and we’re not friends anymore.”

            Jesse just grinned. Jimmy wasn’t mad, probably couldn’t get mad at the kid even if he tried. He played a few more notes and Jesse got serious, trying to create a cadence in time with the song. The younger man was a horrible timekeeper, hitting the snare when it called for bass and smacking the sticks against the cymbal with abandon. He caught Jimmy looking at him and embarrassment bloomed in his cheeks.

            “Yo, quit staring. It’s disrupting my creative process.”

            “Me, staring? Don’t flatter yourself. Here, listen to this.” He strummed a few notes. “Just keep it to that drum on the left, yeah. One-two, one-two. Okay, no.”

            He closed the distance between them, slinging his guitar to his back so he could reach around Jesse’s shoulders. He hardly thought about what he was doing as he took Jesse’s hands into his own, showing him how to hold the drumsticks.

            “That way you’ll be able to move around quicker, see?”

            Jesse didn’t say anything, fingers shifting to make his grip like Jimmy’s. They hit a few beats, and Jimmy almost kept going, but then he realized that his palms were still feathering the back of Jesse’s hands, guiding him. He moved to the other side of the booth.

            “Yeah, I, uh, I think I got it now. How do you know all this stuff, anyway?”

            “I’ve dabbled over the years.” Jimmy hoped that Jesse couldn’t tell what was encoded in this statement: He’d had a lot of free time to spend watching Internet videos of classic rock performances. “Why, you impressed?”

            Jesse’s drumming fell into time with Jimmy’s riff, and the soundproof booth was filled with something that was close to a song. Jesse nodded along with each beat, a small smile playing at the corner of his lips. They were playing a Beatles song, a little slower than it was supposed to go, but still recognizable.

            “We’re like Sabbath, man!”

            “Completely off on the era, but I’ll roll with it.”

            A timer went off after fifteen minutes, signaling the end of their session, but they kept playing around with the instruments. The museum wasn’t crowded during the middle of the week, and it didn’t seem like there was any security around to enforce the rules.

            “You hungry?” Jesse asked after a while. They’d been playing for at least an hour, but it only felt like a matter of minutes. Jimmy realized he was pretty hungry, and as much as he wanted to continue showing off his shaky—but still god-like—rock prowess, he had barely eaten breakfast and could probably keel over at any second from low blood sugar.

            “They have food here, so we don’t even have to leave,” Jesse added.

            “There’s more to see?”

            “Hell yeah.”

            “Lead the way, Jesse.”

            Jimmy hoped that the reverence with which he spoke each syllable of Jesse’s name went undetected. After they ordered pizza slices and drinks, he pretended to be indifferent to the way Jesse laughed when he dripped molten cheese onto his jeans.

            “Looks like you finally got reason to throw those jeans away.”

            “What’s wrong with my jeans?” Jimmy protested. “Had them since the early nineties.”

            “Yeah, and you can _tell_.”

            “I know what’s going on, you’re overcome with jealousy. Got all the classic symptoms.”

            “Dude, no way. You’ve got a dad ass in those things.”

            “You checking me out?” Of course Jesse hadn’t been looking like that. Jesse probably regarded him with revulsion, just like the short string of lovers Jimmy had after fleeing Albuquerque. Gone as soon as they realized they hadn’t been fucking the famous Kevin Costner. And with Jesse, he didn’t have a celebrity façade to hide behind. He was just Jimmy McGill, a man who was long past his prime. He never even had a prime, just jumped from mistake to mistake with little in between.

            “Uh, no. Jesus.” Jesse took a huge bite and chased it with some Coke. “Let’s go watch the movie.”

            The movie was in a wide, lofted room with rows of plastic-looking couches. They chose one near the back. The place was almost empty, and dimly lit, with colored lights that pulsed in time with the film. It was in the middle of a documentary about Nirvana, and a banner scrolled across the bottom of the screen, announcing that footage of Jimi Hendrix was up next.

            “When did you come here before?” Jimmy asked, whispering even though the music from the movie was loud enough to drown him out.

            “When I first moved.” Jesse kept his eyes on the screen, wiped a little sauce off the side of his mouth with the back of his hand. “I came by myself.”

            They watched the movie, and then the Hendrix performance after that.

            “I remember watching this as a kid,” Jimmy said. “Using his guitar to protest like that. My old man wouldn’t let us—” Jesse’s head was suddenly on his shoulder, breathing slow and steady with sleep. His hands were still grasped loosely around his Coke, so Jimmy eased it to the ground before it fell. Then he sat completely still, feeling that his only purpose in that moment was to be as comfortable as possible for Jesse. He knew the kid still got nightmares sometimes, and his sleep cycle was shit, so he needed this. Jimmy would sit through ten more rounds of the Nirvana documentary if it meant Jesse getting some much-needed sleep.

            A while later, Jesse began stirring. Concert footage of The Red Hot Chili Peppers was blaring overhead, making Jimmy marvel at how much his noise tolerance had changed over the years. Christ, if this wasn’t breaking noise-level regulations. Flea had his bass halfway on the ground, crouched in mid-solo ecstasy as the crowd went wild. Jimmy looked down as Jesse shifted, hoping the kid wouldn’t wake up. His arm had started pricking with pins and needles about two documentaries ago, but he didn’t dare move. The lightest brush of Jesse’s hair against his neck kept him rooted in place, unable to focus on the documentary.

            “Hey,” Jesse mumbled sleepily, rubbing at his tired face. Jimmy looked down as Jesse’s uncovered his eyes. The younger man’s eyes were blue, so blue, they really didn’t have a right to be that goddamn blue. Jesse looked up at him, a sleepy, half-formed smile on his lips. “How long was I out?”

            “Long enough to make me lose feeling in the entire right side of my body,” Jimmy joked and Jesse sat abruptly, staring at his hands. God, why did Jimmy always have to ruin things with some useless wisecrack? He wanted to pull Jesse back toward him, wrap his arm around the younger man’s shoulders and tell him that he could put Jimmy’s arm to sleep for as long as he wanted.

            “We should probably get going,” Jesse mumbled. “Parking meter’s probably run out by now.”

            Jimmy picked Jesse’s Coke up off the ground and they headed for the exit. It was raining, and the sun had set, so Jimmy began zipping his jacket up all the way. Jesse put a hand out to stop him. His fingers brushed across the back of Jimmy’s hand, almost skirting his wrist. It was the lightest touch, yet Jimmy felt it everywhere.

            “You can’t fight the rain, you just gotta embrace it.”

            “Oh yeah? Who told you that was a good idea—your doctor? Well let me tell you, doctors make out like mad when their patients get pneumonia, so I wouldn’t take their word as gospel.”

            “Trust me.” Jesse grinned and started running. Jimmy let himself laugh for a moment, watching Jesse’s quick shuffle through the dark, rainy night. Then he ran, too.

            He felt his face get wet, but it didn’t faze him. He could see Jesse getting close to the car, his form illuminated beneath the orange streetlamps. He looked up, saw the Space Needle’s spire rising high above them. A light blinked on top, reminding him of the classic lighthouses he’d seen in movies. What were lighthouses supposed to do? Guide sailors safely home, or some shit like that. Jesse was unlocking the car, scrambling inside. Jimmy followed, clambering through the passenger side door.

            “Wasn’t that dope?” Jesse asked, running a jacket sleeve across his face to wipe some of the water.

            “I had fun today, Jesse.”

            “Hell yeah. I want you to like it here, man.”

            Resting his head back, Jimmy could see the lights of the Space Needle reflected against his window. Jimmy more than liked Seattle. With Jesse’s help, he’d made it safely home.

***

            Jesse worked weekdays, so Jimmy felt a little heavier than usual when he woke up Monday morning. He’d almost set his alarm to rouse him before Jesse, but he worried that making breakfast might freak the kid out a little. He had turned the alarm off right before falling asleep, telling himself that he’d clean the house instead. Yeah, that was less weird than breakfast.

            But he got up early on his own, cloud-filtered light spilling in darkly through the cracks between the blinds. He could hear Jesse bumping around the house, and he felt anticipation well up in his chest as he realized he had a chance to get a few words in before work—maybe even get some useful information like what grocery store the kid preferred, or what around the place needed sprucing up.

            He pulled some borrowed sweatpants on and dragged his fingers through his hair. He was just looking at his reflection in the mirror—always a letdown to find that nothing had changed—when he heard the front door open and close. Dammit, he’d missed his chance to see Jesse before work.

            Setting aside his disappointment, Jimmy decided the house would be spotless by the time Jesse returned home. The house was so different than his small, bare apartment back in Nevada. Even the guest room had a potted plant in the corner, a fern that Jesse asked Jimmy to water every night before going to bed.

            There was a fire crackling in the living room, creating a puddle of golden light to offset the watery silver shimmering through the windows. Jimmy stood in front of it for a minute. Just thinking of Jesse taking time out of his early morning to build the fire for him made Jimmy as warm on the inside as he was on the outside. He smiled down at the orange flames, wondering if this was what it felt like to have someone care about him.

            Suddenly the front door opened and he heard the squelch of wet shoes against tile. Then there were footsteps on the carpeted stairs and Jesse appeared, shaking his hood off and tossing his beanie onto the counter.

            “Shouldn’t you be halfway downtown by now?”

            “Nah, I took a rain day.”

            Jimmy chuckled and shook his head.

            “I’m sure you’re the boss’ favorite—a real employee of the month.”

            “Shut up. I’m making a waffle. I can make you one too, if you’re hungry.”

            “Thanks kid, but I’m still full from that salmon we ate last night.”

            “Oh, uh, okay.”

            “I’m kidding. Dazzle me with your waffle-making skills.”

            Jesse grinned and headed into the kitchen. Jimmy heard some clattering and laughed.

            “Need my help in there?” he called.

            “Fuck off, man.” Jimmy could hear the smile in the younger man’s voice. He grabbed a magazine off the coffee table and sat in the overstuffed chair closest to the fire. It was almost too warm, wrapping him in a thick layer of heat that felt tangible as a blanket. Outside, wind rushed through the boughs of the pine tree in Jesse’s front yard and sent rain pounding against the windows.

            “It gonna be like this all day?”

            Jesse stuck his head out of the kitchen doorway.

            “Supposed to ease up around noon. Then I was thinking we could, I dunno, do something?”

            He ducked back into the kitchen as soon as he said it, and Jimmy was glad. That way Jesse wasn’t around to witness the uncontrollable smile that spread across Jimmy’s face at the idea of spending time doing something, _anything_ , with the younger man. He opened the magazine and flipped through, just looking at pictures to avoid staring out at the storm clouds and thinking about Jesse. Christ, pay attention to the Jeep ad. Wow, candy-apple red. Flashy. Gah, fuck cars, he couldn’t even pretend to focus on a single thing aside from the man who was making him a waffle in the other room. He got up and went to the counter. Sitting on one of the barstools, he watched as Jesse carefully pulled a finished waffle off the iron and added more batter.

            “What are you humming?” Jimmy asked, resting his hands on his chin.

            “God, Jimmy, you can’t just sneak up on me like that, man. And I wasn’t humming.”

            “You were, so what was it? Better be something good, or I’ll be obligated to make fun of you.”

            Jesse opened a couple cupboards, obviously not finding what he was looking for.

            “Hey, so, I think I’m out of syrup. Want me to run to the store?”

            “That won’t be necessary. Besides, I’d like to eat that waffle while it’s still nice and hot.”

            “It probably won’t taste that good,” Jesse mumbled, sliding it across the counter and turning away shyly. He stood at the opposite side of the kitchen, watching the waffle iron so he wouldn’t leave his in a second longer than he was supposed to.

            “So what were you humming?” Jimmy pressed, cutting his waffle with the fork Jesse gave him.

            “Just one of those songs from the other day. The Sabbath one, or whatever.”

            “The Beatles?” The one they played together?

            “Yeah.” Jesse shrugged.

            “You got a computer and some blank CDs around this big house of yours?”

            “Maybe. What, a week in Seattle and you’re some kind of tech genius?”

            “Though I do plan on shaking hands with Bill Gates and getting a personal tour of the Microsoft campus while I’m here, no. Instead of hacking you, I was thinking of something a little more mutually beneficial. A mix for us to listen to.”

            “Dude, that’d be dope. Let me go check. Watch the waffle iron.”

            “You got it, kid.”

            Jesse disappeared down the hall and Jimmy stood with his plate. When the light flicked to green, he set his plate down on the counter and slid Jesse’s waffle out of the iron.

            “Yo, I got a few CDs here.” Jesse had his laptop and a stack of jewel cases. He looked proud of himself as he set them on the counter where Jimmy had been eating.

            “I’ll trade you for this freshly made waffle.” Jimmy handed Jesse the warm plate and sat back down on the barstool.

            “I’m gonna watch some TV.”

            Jesse went to the living room and Jimmy got to work, creating a mix with some of the songs he’d played at the museum and others he thought Jesse might like. He forgot about his waffle as he worked, feeling a little embarrassed of how much effort he was putting in to making sure each song was perfect but wanting more than anything for Jesse to enjoy the CD.

            As the CD burned in the disk drive, Jimmy washed his plate and realized that the rain was beginning to lighten up. From the window behind the sink, he could see the entirety of Jesse’s backyard. Green, unmown lawn, overflowing birdbath, the whole thing fenced in with pines. Jimmy poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot Jesse had made earlier that morning and stood still, listening to the gentle whoosh of rain. It was beautiful.

            “Got an extra parka for you.” Jesse dumped his plate in the sink and tossed a jacket over Jimmy’s shoulder. “You’ll need it.”

            “Mind telling me where we’re going before we shove off?”

            “Gotta build up the suspense, man.”

            An hour later, Jimmy found himself watching dubiously as Jesse lowered a metal-sided canoe into Lake Washington. He had tried desperately to not look nervous as the guy at the rental shack handed him two paddles and a couple life vests “just in case.” Just in case? The fuck did that mean? Jimmy could no longer tell if his forehead was wet with rain or a cold, terrified sweat.

            Jesse grabbed his life vest and tossed it to the bottom of the canoe along with his paddle. Jimmy unzipped his rain parka and Jesse gave him a look.

            “Uh, it’s just gonna be wetter in the canoe, yo.”

            “It’s a process, kid. Watch and learn.” Jimmy pulled his life jacket on and buckled it tight. Just in case. Then he zipped the parka back on, hiding his insecurities. “How do I look?”

            “A few pounds heavier, maybe, but besides that, it’s just the same ugly face I’m used to.” Jesse didn’t laugh at Jimmy’s obvious worries, though. He smiled softly, encouraging. “You ever been in one of these things?”

            “No, and I have to say she’s not the most seaworthy-looking vessel I’ve ever laid eyes on. You sure you couldn’t have gotten us something a little bigger? I see some yachts over there.”

            “Yachts are for rich douchebags. C’mon, I promise you won’t sink.” With one hand on the canoe to keep it tethered to the dock, Jesse held his other out for Jimmy to take.

            Jimmy slipped his hand into Jesse’s, hesitant at first, but with increasing pressure as he lowered himself into the boat. Jesus, he was probably crushing the kid’s hand. If Jesse noticed the pressure, he didn’t show it, letting Jimmy hold on until he was settled with his paddle across his lap.

            “Okay, now I’m gonna get in and then we’ll, like, go.”

            Jesse hopped into the canoe behind him, and Jimmy closed his eyes as it moved back and forth. The sloshing sound of wake rocking the tiny boat didn’t put him at ease. He felt Jesse’s hands near his shoulder blades, and his hood was over his head. In his panicked state, he’d completely forgotten that, aside from the water all around him, it was falling from the sky, too.

            “Don’t want the doctors making fat stacks off your pneumonia, man.”

            “Thanks, Jesse.” He meant it.

            They settled into a rhythm. Jesse knew where they were going, so he guided them under a freeway overpass and down a section where the lake narrowed. Willows cast dripping branches over the water and the banks were edged with lily pads. Jimmy kept both hands tightly gripped around the smooth metal of his paddle, even when they were in areas so shallow he could see the bottom.

            “There’s a spot on the left up here,” Jesse said. “Wanna stop?”

            “Sure.” Jimmy wanted to ask why Jesse was keen on stopping, but he was ready to wait until his feet were firmly planted on the ground before trying to get any answers. They paddled to a small inlet and Jesse jumped out, dragging the nose of the canoe onto the embankment. As Jimmy got out, his exit a little clumsier than he would’ve liked, Jesse reached into the back of the canoe. He pulled a black backpack out from under his life vest.

            “What’s that, some sort of wilderness survival kit? Don’t tell me we’re camping out here.”

            “It’s, uh, a picnic. I packed it while you were getting dressed.” Jesse kicked at the ground, probably worried that Jimmy was going to denounce his efforts. Jimmy had to focus all his energy on not reaching out to trail a finger over the embarrassed line of Jesse’s lips.

            “Well, I worked that waffle off paddling us out here, so count me in.”

            “You didn’t do shit,” Jesse laughed. It was true. Jimmy’s attempts at paddling had mostly gotten them off course, so he’d spent most of the journey looking over the side of the canoe, trying to spot fish.

            Jesse showed him a picnic area that was only a few yards from the lake. Mismatched picnic tables were all clumped together beneath so many trees, it felt like they were indoors. Hardly any light bled through the branches, and the raindrops that fell were fat, stored in the leaves and dropped only when they grew too heavy to support.

            Jesse had packed sandwiches, turkey on white bread, and a bag of chips. Jimmy had the strangest feeling that they were the only two people alive at that moment, cocooned by the rain and the trees, entirely separate from the rest of the world. He felt Jesse’s knees brush against his underneath the picnic table and tried to not react.

            “I’ve had some good sandwiches over the years, kid, but this is one of the best.”

            “It’s my secret ingredient.”

            “Oh? I didn’t take you for the type to have your own recipes.”

            “Oregano. That angry British guy on TV, he said oregano was the key to any sandwich, so I tried it. He was fucking right.”

            Jimmy smiled and ate another bite.

            “I’m glad you didn’t go to work today.”

            “I almost did, but then I was, like, fuck it, you know? I wanna hang out with Saul—uh, I mean Jimmy.” He looked a little apologetic. “Still getting used to that.”

            “S’all good, man. No harm, no foul.” Jimmy chuckled a little at his own joke, but Jesse just rolled his eyes and looked down.

            “I like Jimmy better. It fits, or whatever.”

            “I like it better too. But you’d better not tell me you’ve got some secret name you’ve been hiding from me all these years. I’m sorry, kid, but you’re a Jesse, through and through.”

            “You don’t have to worry about that, man. I’m just Jesse.”

            Jimmy liked being friends with just Jesse. On the way back, the younger man kept his mind from wandering too far into his worries by describing a woman who kept hitting on him at work. Then he talked about a book he’d recently read, and the way he sometimes worried he’d start using again when he felt alone.

            “You’re strong, Jesse. Stronger than most people I know—hell, stronger than me.”

            “I bought some, once.” Jesse’s voice was almost too quiet for Jimmy to hear, and he was glad they weren’t facing each other. Jimmy didn’t know if he could handle the pain in Jesse’s eyes without attempting to alleviate it in some small way. He probably wouldn’t be able to stop himself from pulling the younger man into his arms and holding on until Jesse fell asleep.

            “From a guy I work with. Meth, really cheap. It was a shit day. Boss yelled at me for doing something wrong, a lady told me I messed up her order and it came out of my pay. So during my break, I went out to my car. Parking lot was almost empty, I couldn’t see out the windshield it was pouring so hard. I had a line all set, ready to go, and thirty minutes before I had to be back. And I…I just didn’t do it. I stared at it for a while, and just, like, went back to work when my break was over. The rest of the shift wasn’t even that bad.”

            They paddled in silence for a while, Jimmy even pitching in and not getting them too far off course. Their breaks in conversation were natural, comfortable, broken by nothing but the muted sounds of their paddles dipping beneath the surface of the water.

            “I admire you. A lot, actually.” Jimmy coughed, worried that his words were so sincere that they might ring untrue. Would Jesse believe those words, despite all the jokes Jimmy found himself telling?

            “I—I don’t deserve your admiration.” He could hear the brokenness of Jesse’s words and knew the younger man was crying. He wished desperately that he could remedy the situation, make Jesse realize that none of what happened was his fault. When they got back to the dock, Jimmy moved to get out of the canoe. He was determined to be the one to help Jesse when he needed it.

            Jimmy grabbed the dock with both hands, feeling the canoe move uncertainly under him as he let his weight shift.

            “What are you doing, man, you’re gonna—”

            With a splash, Jimmy fell into the lake. The water was colder than he expected, but his life jacket kept him afloat, bobbing next to the dock. He was humiliated.

            “Dude, hang on.” Jesse pulled himself out of the canoe with no problem and knelt down. Jimmy took hold of both hands and Jesse pulled him out of the water. Jimmy scrambled to get his legs onto the dock and they fell back against each other. Jimmy’s head was against Jesse’s chest, his dripping jeans too close to Jesse’s dry ones. Neither of them moved for a moment.

            “I’m gonna practice that. I can promise you my execution will be better next time,” Jimmy said. He felt Jesse’s chest gently rumble with laughter before he forced himself to pull away and crawl to the canoe to remove their paddles and Jesse’s life vest. Surely his proximity had been making Jesse uncomfortable.

            Once they were back in the car, Jesse fussed with the heater, making sure it was turned up as high as it would go. Jimmy huddled against the vent, eyes closed as the air warmed him.

            “You saved me back there, kid. I’m usually a lot better out on the water, but it was choppy out there today.” It’d been glassy, hardly even the hint of a swell besides the occasional wake from a speedboat, but he had to make up some excuse, no matter how flimsy. “You don’t have to do all this stuff for me—lunch, missing work. Just, thanks.”

            “You don’t have to thank me, Jimmy. I, uh, like having you around.”

            Jimmy took a look out the window and saw Greek block letters fronting most of the buildings.

            “What’s this area?” he asked.

            “U District. I was actually thinking we could, like, look around after we went canoeing, but you decided to go swimming, so.”

            “Let’s make a quick stop. I’m fine—what’s a little lake water when it’s coming down from the sky?”

            “You serious?”

            “Yeah. There’s a parking spot.” Jimmy pointed to where a Prius had just backed out. “Are we close to the main campus?”

            “I, uh, yeah I think so.” Jesse peered out the window and turned his wipers to a higher setting.

            “Get it before this guy swings in and steals it from us.”

            Jesse parallel parked in the space. The rain was getting harder, so he groped around the backseat for his umbrella.

            “I only have the one.” He held it up—the cheap, black kind, very nondescript, probably from Wal Mart. “But we can share?”

            “Works for me.” Jimmy shrugged like he was indifferent, but his heart was racing as Jesse raised it against the downpour and rounded the front of the car. Jesse was already holding it over him when he opened the passenger door and stepped onto the sidewalk.

            “Hold it for a sec.”

            As Jimmy took the umbrella, Jesse locked the car and stuffed his keys into his jacket pocket. Then he grabbed the umbrella in the same spot he’d been holding it before, his long fingers wrapping around Jimmy’s hand that was trembling with the cold.

            “Dude, you’re, like, _seizing_. Are you sure you don’t just wanna go home?”

            “I’m sure, I’m sure.” Jimmy was very sure. With Jesse’s hand cradled around his own, he could’ve weathered subzero conditions.

            “C’mon, then.” And just like that, Jesse’s arm was around Jimmy’s shoulders and they were walking toward campus. Jimmy felt nestled into the crook of Jesse’s elbow, the warm weight of the younger man’s arm pressed against the back of his neck. He couldn’t fight a small smile, though he tried with all his might to suppress it. He risked a sideways glance and saw that Jesse was smiling too.

            They walked past the library, a hulking, gothic building with stained glass windows and gray flagstone steps. Beyond that, sweeping lawns with big, gnarled trees stretched as far as they could see, broken up only by more stone buildings, some with ivy crawling up the walls, trying to find a way in through the windows.

            “Here.” Jesse tugged him into a hall. Inside, they broke apart and he shook out the umbrella, tossed it next to the door. “They never lock the classrooms.”

            They opened the first door and found a wood-paneled lecture hall.

            “I didn’t exactly get the normal college experience,” Jimmy said. “So this is pretty new to me.”

            Jesse descended the steps until he was at the most sunken part of the room, standing behind the professor’s podium.

            “No one thought I’d go to college.” Jesse shook his head. “ _No_ _one_. My own parents knew I wasn’t good enough—that I’d never do enough in high school to get in anywhere that mattered. They wanted me to go somewhere, they pushed, but a lot of good it did them. But just, like, fuck these places, you know? Professors telling you what to think, it’s _bullshit_. They act like they got answers, but they don’t. No one does. And if they say they do, then they’re lying. They’re all liars.”

            Jimmy sat down in one of the chairs, raised the desk and leaned against it.

            “I got a degree.” He nodded. “Yeah, the good old University of American Samoa. Hurrah! Go to college and all your dreams come true, right?”

            “Was anyone proud of you?”

            “I thought so. My brother, Chuck, acted like he was. Kept it up for a while, but he always saw me for the sham I was.”

            Jesse walked back up the steps and sat in the seat next to Jimmy, looking earnest.

            “You’re the real deal, yo.”

            “Oh, really?” Jimmy gave him a sad smile, unconvinced.

            “You’re the best lawyer ever.”

            When they got back to the car, Jimmy took the mix he’d made out of its jewel case while Jesse cranked the heater up. He slipped it into the stereo and turned the volume high.

            “This!” Jesse jabbed a finger at the speaker closest to him. “This is what I was humming!”

            “It’s called Blackbird. Classic Beatles.”

            “Shit’s good.” Jesse turned it up a little more and the simple melody filled the car. It was just quiet enough that Jimmy could hear rain hitting the windshield and getting scrubbed away by the wipers. He tapped his fingers against the heating vent and started to sing along with the familiar lyrics, shy at first, but with increasing volume. He tried to ignore Jesse’s frequent glances. The kid probably hoped that Jimmy would shut up, already.

            When the song ended, Jimmy relaxed against his seat.

            “Sorry about the singing, it just comes naturally.”

            “I like your voice. It’s, like, soothing, or whatever.”

            Jesse wasn’t looking over now, staring intently forward at the freeway.

            “Do you think we could listen to it again?”

            “I wanted to listen again too,” Jimmy admitted.

            So they did.


	3. Chapter 3

            Jimmy walked to the grocery store on Friday to stock up on weekend supplies. He carried an umbrella and a few reusable grocery bags, since Seattle had implemented their plastic bag ban long before even Jesse had moved there. The store wasn’t far away, only a ten-minute walk on a tree-fringed bike path that wound alongside Jesse’s neighborhood. A woman jogged in the opposite direction, a German Shepherd leashed at her side. She gave Jimmy a pleasant nod, and he found himself wanting a dog of his own. One for him and Jesse.

            He tucked this thought away as the automatic double doors of the grocery store grumbled open. Jesse had requested a pizza when he got home from work, and a movie. Jimmy chose one of the cheap ones off the five-dollar rack—a horror film, the cheesy kind that could almost blur into comedy during particularly gory moments. He debated for a minute, then grabbed a second one. The worst part of his day was when Jesse went to sleep behind the closed door of his bedroom, leaving Jimmy alone to shower and try to get some rest. If he bought an extra movie, it might postpone Jesse’s unavoidable exit for at least an hour or two.

            Back at the house, Jimmy spent most of the afternoon mowing the back lawn and alphabetizing Jesse’s video game collection. It was mindless, unnecessary work, but it made the time pass and it wasn’t long before he was turning the oven to four hundred degrees.

            When the front door opened, Jimmy heard the familiar sound of Jesse shaking his rain parka out. The pizza had been out of the oven for about five minutes and Jimmy had traded it for a pan of brownie batter, so the entire upstairs was rich with a mouthwatering cross between salty and sweet. Jimmy watched Jesse breathe it in appreciatively.

            “Pizza and…cake?” Jesse guessed.

            “Brownies, but it’s close enough that I’ll give it to you. Pizza’s just cooling on the counter.”

            “I’ve always wanted to come home with it smelling like this instead of, you know, the usual wet mildew. I thought a couple times about, like, lighting a candle before I left for work, but fires and shit.”

            “Glad to be of service,” Jimmy chuckled, though he felt a tingle that his actions had made Jesse’s homecoming a little brighter than it usually was.

            “I’m gonna go change.” Jesse headed down the hall toward his room.

            “I’ll plate up a couple slices for you. Oh, and I bought movies, so I’ll queue one up.”

            “Sweet.”

            Jimmy set both plates on the coffee table, a little precarious atop all of Jesse’s vintage car and woodworking magazines. He’d already slipped _Bigfoot’s Revenge_ into the DVD player, so he clicked a button on the remote to get to the menu screen. He settled back into the couch cushions and waited for Jesse to return. He felt like the spaces in his life when Jesse wasn’t around were just that—spaces. Gaps when he was waiting to feel the happiness that came naturally whenever the younger man was around.

            “Yo, this better not be a scary movie. I got plans for us this weekend, and none of it’s gonna happen if I can’t sleep.” Jesse shuffled into the living room with a big fleece blanket wrapped around his shoulders. It was so long that the fringe dragged along the ground as he walked.

            “I hear they make those with sleeves now,” Jimmy nodded at Jesse’s robed appearance. “Seemed like a scam to me, but it looks like you could be the type of customer they’d lust after.”

            Jesse caught sight of the screen, garish bloodred font on a black, flickering background, and groaned.

            “Dude, not cool.”

            “Hide under your blanket if you get scared, kid, this movie train has already left the station.” With that, Jimmy pressed play and grabbed his plate.

            They ate pizza during the opening scenes and Jesse paused it while Jimmy ran their dirty plates into the sink and pulled the brownies out of the oven.

            “I’ll just leave them here to cool off!” Jimmy called from the kitchen. “We’ve got a lot more movie to watch and I’ve always been more of a midnight snack guy.”

            “C’mon, let’s just play videogames,” Jesse pleaded as Jimmy returned to the couch. “This isn’t good for my heart, or whatever. I’m already getting, like, palpitations and shit.”

            In response, Jimmy clicked the table lamp off so that the only light came from the softly pulsing glow of the TV.

            “Fuck you, Jimmy.”

            Jimmy didn’t have any right to feel so thrilled to hear Jesse lazily enunciate his name through a mouthful of pizza. He rejoined the younger man and crossed his arms over himself like a small, protective hug. When he wasn’t nursing a glass of scotch, his folded arms had been his go-to way of reassuring himself that he still mattered. Even if no one else in the world cared for him, he had Scout and a small roadside souvenir shop that depended on him. It had been enough to get him through a couple flat, empty years, but now he didn’t need it. As Jesse pressed play, Jimmy let his arms relax comfortably at his sides. He didn’t need to remedy loneliness anymore with the person he cared about most in the world sitting a couple feet away from him, burrito-wrapped in a blanket.

            “I promise this movie is just gonna be funny. I looked it up on the Internet after I got home from the store, and you wanna know the budget they had for this thing? Five-thousand dollars! That’s not even enough to hire a decent actor unless he decided to go nonprofit. Which, trust me on this one, is not the Hollywood way.”

            “Dude, okay. Not scary, whatever. I missed everything that guy just said because you wouldn’t shut up.”

            Jesse ate his last bite of pizza and pulled the edges of the blanket tighter around his shoulders. The movie was slow at first, a little clunky, but the plot began picking up at a rate that surprised Jimmy. By the middle, he found himself intrigued by the characters, and annoyed that they couldn’t seem to grasp that the grisly forest murders were not unrelated happenings, but clearly all smaller pieces of Bigfoot’s Revenge. Jimmy sat forward as nighttime approached onscreen, sure that another killing was imminent.

            “You cold?” Jesse’s voice came suddenly, startling Jimmy. As he looked over, Jesse was already extending a corner of the blanket and moving the tiniest bit closer to Jimmy’s side of the couch.

            Jimmy wasn’t particularly cold. He’d seen Jesse turn up the heater before heading down the hall to change out of his work clothes, so he knew the temperature couldn’t have dipped below seventy-five degrees. But he accepted the offer anyway, settling in much closer to Jesse than before. He kept watching, now only focusing on the plot to avoid chancing a glance over at Jesse and likely getting caught. Jimmy could imagine the plush fibers of the blanket kind of like a network, taking his warmth and Jesse’s scent and allowing everything to mingle in between them.

            “I, uh, I’m actually not cold,” Jesse whispered. “This is just kind of freaking me out.”

            Jimmy didn’t entirely know how to respond to the admission.

            “We can turn it off, kid. I can’t say I’m not intrigued by the story they’ve set up here, but I’ll watch it on my own time. It’s not worth losing sleep over, no way.”

            “No, it’s okay. Could I just, like, uh….”

            Whatever the kid wanted, he was having trouble getting it out. Instead of letting him grasp around for the right words, Jimmy took a gamble. He did exactly what he wanted to do: Pulled Jesse to him, let the younger man’s head rest against his chest, and felt the full weight of regret knowing that he wanted to protect Jesse from everything and couldn’t. Past, present, future, Jimmy felt powerless as he considered how little he’d been able to do for Jesse back in Albuquerque, and the uncertainty of whether he could do anything now.

            “I’m sorry I told you this would be a barrel of laughs, the gorilla-suit guy on the front cover really threw me for a loop.” He spoke at his normal volume, hoping that he sounded as eye-roll inducing as he usually did. To his surprise, Jesse laughed a little and buried his head a little in the warm cotton of Jimmy’s t-shirt. What was happening? Was Jesse really here or, God, was he imagining this? Probably. Jimmy tentatively placed a hand on Jesse’s shoulders, his thumb resting on the edge of Jesse’s t-shirt sleeve. Real, this was _real_.

            Bigfoot was stabbing someone with a branch, chasing another someone down a moonlight trail, and Jimmy couldn’t give two shits. Jesse’s ear was a stethoscope against his ribcage, so he tried to even his breathing to slow down the frantic flopping of his heart. Hopefully the kid was chalking it up to terrified heart palpitations, nothing else.

            “Yikes,” Jimmy said once all five campers were good and dead. “That was a bad one. Scared?”

            “Uh, no. I dunno, I feel, like, safe when I’m close to you. That’s weird. Shit, forget I said anything, man.”

            “Weird is Bigfoot going on a murderous rampage after someone flipped him off. Did you know that the Bigfoot species is considered one of the more docile? Researchers say that they’re afraid of humans, but of course we make them into guys in gorilla suits with sharp branches. Classic Hollywood strikes again.”

            He couldn’t stop talking. If he stopped, he might find himself unable to start up again because Jesse’s hand had moved to his chest, fingers flat against his shirt. Jimmy watched the tattoo flicker in the light-dark-light-dark of a chase scene and wondered if Jesse was paying as little attention to the five-dollar movie as he was.

            Jimmy wordlessly let his hand fall around Jesse’s. He felt the younger man respond, lacing their fingers together and providing the lightest pressure. He’d never felt so close to another person before, their individual failures and vices and fears meaningless within a space that was entirely of their own creation. Jimmy imagined himself looking at the front window of the house from the street, wondering at the happy people inside and wishing for someone who would not only cry at his funeral, but celebrate him in the months and years that followed. He and Jesse were a rectangle of artificial light from the street, their problems unknowable and their feelings indecipherable. Jimmy couldn’t believe that he wasn’t on the outside waiting for something spectacular to chase away the sorrows of mediocrity. He was here, and Jesse was with him, and it was everything.

            “Hey, we’re gonna go look at houses tomorrow,” Jesse mumbled after the movie was over. He grinned up at Jimmy’s confusion.

            “I’m going to attribute that comment to your long day at work and prescribe a long night of sleep to remedy it.”

            “No, for real.” Jesse reached his hand to Jimmy’s face and let his index finger dance gently across Jimmy’s lips. Jimmy flushed at the touch and wondered if Jesse would ever be so bold without sleep deprivation as an excuse to hide behind. “But don’t worry, it’ll be casual.”

***

“What a departure from the drudgery of Craftsman homes,” Jimmy said.

            The houses Jesse had parked near appeared to be floating, connected to wooden docks that extended out over Lake Union. Beyond the homes and across the lake, Jimmy could see downtown Seattle, the Space Needle spearing the shimmering clouds. All of the docks were plastered with signage: KEEP OUT, RESIDENTS ONLY.

            “But it doesn’t look like we’ll be doing any looking today,” he continued, pointing at a particularly hostile marker. He felt bad that the kid had driven them all the way out here just to be shut down by some homeowners who were obviously tired of having tourists gawk through their windows.

            “Ah, Mr. McGill!”

            Jimmy was struck motionless at the sound of his name, and even more bewildered when Jesse responded to it.

            “Nice to meet you in person, Mr. Willard.” Jesse shook hands with the man, an average-looking guy in a charcoal coat and slacks.

            “Please, it’s Anthony. And this must be your husband.”

            _Husband?_ Jimmy was bewildered, but he was ready to make his mark as Washington’s Number One Bullshitter. Jesse had obviously banked on Jimmy’s quick-thinking fibs to keep up the ruse.

            “James,” he said, shaking Anthony’s hand. “Or Jimmy.”

            “It’s so good to meet both of you, and I’m pleased you’re considering a floating home. Jimmy, Jesse was telling me all about your employment with Microsoft, and I’m happy to report that we have a lot of others who also work in tech within the floating home community. I think you’ll find it’s a great fit, if you’d like to follow me and take a look around.”

            Anthony turned and started down one of the docks. Jimmy widened his eyes at Jesse, knowing the younger man couldn’t explain with their real estate agent so close by. Jesse just grinned and took Jimmy’s hand.

            “Is this okay?” Jesse whispered.

            “It’s okay,” Jimmy said, tugging a little so that their shoulders were pressed together. He wasn’t sure if the warmth he could feel through the fabric of his parka was only imagined, but he knew for certain that the heat where their fingers met was from Jesse’s still-uncertain touch.

            “Does he think we can actually _afford_ this?” Jimmy hissed.

            “Duh. You’re at Microsoft, and I’m a lawyer there—that’s how we met. We’re fucking loaded.”

            “I’m not the lawyer?”

            “I maybe took some, like, _liberties_ , or whatever.”

            The most glaring liberty— _husband_ —was something that Jimmy was unable to articulate. The way Anthony looked back at them, salesman smile, welcoming demeanor, Jesus, the man actually _believed_ that Jesse would settle for someone like Jimmy.

            “Yeah, kid, maybe just a few.”

            Jesse grinned as Anthony invited them into a house near the end of the dock. Jimmy had never seen houses like these, windows like eyes everywhere, offering views of water and cityscape. Most had roof decks with chaise loungers and barbeque pits, but Jimmy wondered how often these could really be used. After all, he’d glimpsed the sun only a few times during his stay in Seattle.

            “I’ll just be here in the living room if you have any questions. Feel free to explore the house and envision yourselves here.”

            Glossy, honey-hued flooring, tile countertops, no décor. Of course Jimmy could see him and Jesse here—he could see the two of them anywhere, from a couch on the side of the Interstate 5 to a mansion on Capitol Hill.

            As Anthony seated himself on a chair in the sparse living room, they moved into the kitchen.

            “Yo, can’t you see me burning stuff here?” Jesse gestured to the electric stovetop.

            “Seeing as I’ve never witnessed you burning something, I’m not so sure.”

            “That’s because you’ve only seen me make waffles. I’m a pro at waffles.”

            They went upstairs, footfalls muffled by thick carpeting. They continued up a second staircase, this one metal and winding. It opened up to the roof, a flat, walled-in patio with potted ferns and a fire pit. It was funny, Jimmy reflected, that this was the most touristy he’d felt since coming to Seattle. Just thinking of tourism made his stomach clench, the memory of unpacking and shelving box after box of overpriced alien jerky rising like bile in his throat. He reached for Jesse with something like desperation, feeling a little like a balloon that might float away, all the way back to Nevada, without something tethering him here and now.

            He wrapped both his arms around one of Jesse’s.

            “Windy as hell up here,” he said, suddenly nervous as Jesse turned and looked at him. “I might have to install a glass atrium once we slap down a few million to buy the place.”

            “Dude, no way. The wind is a part of the _experience_. You have to feel everything.”

            Jimmy felt the peppermint sting of the wind and he felt Jesse’s hand on his face. He felt the first drops of a rainstorm and he felt Jesse’s form press against his. He felt the folds in his jacket where rainwater might pool and he felt breathless as Jesse leveled his face an inch away. He felt Jesse’s forehead and he felt Jesse’s hands on his back and he felt the molten blue of Jesse’s eyes.

            Jimmy ran his thumbs over the stubble of Jesse’s jaw, bolder than he’d thought possible. He saw Jesse’s mouth open a little and marveled that _he_ was the creator of such a beautiful, perfect thing.

            He wanted to say something, to tell the younger man that his life was hardly more than a checklist before he’d shown up. Wake up, check. Feed Scout, check. Work, check. Dairy Queen, check. Feed Scout, check. Cry, check. Sleep, check. Such a goddamn miserable excuse of a life.

            Now he woke up each morning in a snowglobe state, his insides shaken at the thought of getting to spend another day with Jesse. His best friend.

            “Say something,” Jesse whispered urgently.

            “I can’t.”

            “Kiss me, then.”

            He was afraid to, worried that this perfect, mirage moment would splinter as soon as he did. What if Jesse decided this wasn’t what he wanted? Jimmy was too afraid.

            It started raining as he broke away and went to the edge of the roof, crossing his arms tightly around himself. It was like he was seeing the city lights through a layer of tissue paper, made translucent by rain-swept skies. All of it, the lake, the skyline, the dark gray clouds, were nothing without what stood behind him. Had his insecurities just ruined everything that mattered?

            “Hey, Jimmy, I—I’m sorry. Just let me know if you’re, like, okay.”

            Jimmy took a deep breath. He was vaguely aware of the fact that he’d never been so cold, and that he was shaking. There weren’t pools in the crooks of his elbows; his entire body was a puddle, from the wet-soft sides of his shoes to his eyes, blind in the torrential downpour.

            He turned around and shielded his eyes from the rain.

            “I’m the one who’s sorry, Jesse. I didn’t know what to do—you deserve so much better than me, you know that? It’d be downright shitty to let you be with me when you could have so much more.”

            “So much more?” Jesse shouted. “So much more than what, man? So much more than my best friend, than the only person I care about? Yeah, I want so much more than that.”

            “Jesse,” Jimmy pleaded. He wanted Jesse’s words to be true, but could he live with himself if they were?

            “Whatever, man.” Jesse was still shouting over the rain. “I know I’m just some junkie that you used to work for.”

            “Why the fuck would I have come all the way to Seattle with you if I saw you that way, Jesse?” Jimmy wasn’t keeping his voice down now. Something about the way Jesse misconstrued the situation made him desperate to set the record straight. “Would I have left my old life behind for someone who meant nothing to me?”

            “I was _convenient_. You saw an _opportunity_ and you fucking took it.”

            “You’ve got it all wrong, Jesse!”

            “Yeah? Well, I don’t think I do!” Jesse slumped onto the wet patio next to the firepit and covered his eyes with both hands. “I thought you might’ve realized how I, like, felt about you. I took you canoeing and all that shit.”

            “You think I would’ve gone canoeing with you if I didn’t love you?”

            Jesse looked up in surprise and Jimmy felt himself slowly back away. He could feel the rawness of the moment, their fears poured out onto the deck along with the rain. Jimmy realized that Jesse’s self-hatred was as deeply rooted as his own, and the thought almost made him collapse under the sheer weight of it. He’d assumed that despite everything that Jesse had gone through, the younger man had retained some sense of how incredible he truly was, and all of the potential he had. Now, he knew that Jesse was just as scared of the past as he was.

            Jimmy sat down on the deck a few feet away from Jesse, right in a puddle. It didn’t matter—he was soaked through, and still shaking. He looked down at his hands, both clenched into trembling fists.

            “You’re definitely getting pneumonia now.”

            “All your fault. I hope you’re ready to pay some hospital bills.” Jimmy was smiling down at his hands. He looked up. “So, what do you say, is this the place?”

            “After you become the best lawyer in Seattle and make some serious cheddar, then yeah. I like it.” Jesse smiled at him, unguarded.

            Jimmy crawled to where Jesse was huddled, hands wrapped around his knees. Beads of water rolled off the tattoo on his forearm, like the little curls and points were crying. Jimmy moved his thumb over the surface of the tattoo, wiping the rain away. Then he moved to Jesse’s face, pushing the hair back from where it’d fallen over the younger man’s forehead. Jesse’s eyes were wide as his hands grasped at Jimmy’s. Their touches were clumsy and cold and Jimmy could only think of a few times he’d felt this happy. All of them were with Jesse.

            Jimmy held both sides of Jesse’s face and drew him closer. Their lips met suddenly, surprisingly, and Jimmy felt Jesse grab onto the back of his jacket. Jimmy’s eyes were closed, but he saw Jesse better than before. Soft and vulnerable, Jesse kissed him the way he’d always wanted to be kissed. He felt the trust that Jesse had for him and kissed back promises to never betray that trust.

            “Oh! I, well, I’m sorry to disturb you, but I started to worry.”

            Jimmy and Jesse broke away slowly, unwillingly, and turned to look at the stuttering realtor. He was standing under a big umbrella, appearing worried about disrupting the wealthy couple. Jimmy gave Jesse a sidelong glance and saw that the younger man wore a matching grin.

            “Do you think you’ll buy the house?” Anthony asked hopefully, abandoning all pretenses.

            “Nah,” Jesse said, getting up. He held out a hand and Jimmy got to his feet. They kept their hands together as they walked toward the metal staircase. “Sorry dude, but we can’t afford this shit.”

            “But I—”

            “He’s telling the truth,” Jimmy said. “What we’re standing on is essentially a glorified boat, and as such, it’s overpriced.”

            “It’s a floating—”

            “Whatever, man. I’m what you’d call a ‘reformed addict’ and this is the guy who kept me outta jail.” Jesse squeezed Jimmy’s hand tightly. “And we’re going home now.”


	4. Chapter 4

            Jimmy couldn’t help shouting along to “Jingle Bells” when it came on for a few seconds during a radio commercial about vacuums.

            “Aw, c’mon!” he shouted when a voiceover muffled the cheery Christmas song. But he was grinning, unable to fight the stupid smile as he passed over the Washington state line. Just a few more hours until he saw Jesse again.

            Jesse. Jimmy glanced at his passenger seat, which was filled with wrapped gifts. He’d buckled them up in California, after he’d slammed on his brakes and they’d tumbled toward the dash. It was almost like having a passenger—a mute pile of things that had reminded him of Jesse. He’d carefully taped each one up with festive wrapping paper, even added some curled ribbon and tags. All of them addressed to Jesse, from Jimmy. There was an advent calendar too, twenty-five chocolate days leading up to Christmas. Jimmy hoped Jesse wouldn’t laugh at that—none of this was normal for Jimmy. He usually spent Christmas sleeping in and avoiding Dairy Queen so Alfredo wouldn’t know he was entirely alone during the holidays. He remembered last year, buying a new shirt for himself, wrapping it in a brown grocery bag, and opening it so that he could wear it while he microwaved Christmas dinner. So maybe he’d gone a little overboard this year. He couldn’t help it. If Jesse made fun if him for it, he didn’t care.

            After the two weeks in Seattle, Jimmy had boarded the Vegas-bound plane with a weighty feeling in his stomach. It almost made him nauseous, looking out at the wintery, rain-carrying clouds and imagining them replaced by the unwavering gaze of the hot sun. The departure had been an awkward, uncertain affair—an exchange of hugs that were caught somewhere between friendship and longing. They didn’t kiss after that afternoon on the floating home, realizing in a silent and somber way that their time together would have to be conditional. Jimmy wasn’t staying in Seattle; the Alien Pitstop awaited him back in Nevada.

            But Jimmy had hardly made it home before Jesse called the store. He realized that Jesse calling meant the kid either wrote down the phone number during his initial visit or he looked it up online. Either scenario made Jimmy giddy with happiness. The call came during one of his night tours, so he listened to the voicemails in the darkness of the closed store.

            “Uh, hey—shit, I hope this is recording, there was no, like, beep to tell me to start talking. So, hey, I just wanted to call and see how you’re doing. Later.”

            “Jimmy, hey, what’s up, so I wasn’t calling just to see how you’re doing, I don’t give a shit about that—wait, no, shit, I _do_ care how you’re doing, I just, uh, shit—”

            “Yo, third time’s the charm, or whatever. I was wondering if you’d want to come visit me next month for Christmas? You don’t have to. I, uh, I dunno. Just call me back.”

            When Jimmy called him back, Jesse sounded relieved, and then ecstatic when Jimmy said he’d love to stay for the holidays. Jimmy knew his boss wouldn’t let him take more time off work, so he told Jesse he was finally going to quit and sell his apartment. He wasn’t sure where he’d end up next, but that was okay. Jesse said he could visit as long as he needed to find a new job.

            When Jimmy pulled onto Jesse’s street, the orange halos of streetlight immediately comforted him. He pulled up to Jesse’s house and marveled at the display the kid had set up. Icicle lights dripped from the eaves, twisty, luminous trees sprouted between the real ones, and multicolored ornaments hung from the evergreen shrubs leading to the front door. The whole scene was dusted with an icing layer of snow.

            It was a goddamn winter wonderland if Jimmy had ever seen one.

            He carried as many presents as his arms would allow and hurried to the door. It seemed as if every light in the house was on, anticipating his arrival. God, he hoped Jesse was nearly as excited to see him as the house seemed to be. He rang the bell and held his breath.

            The door swung open to reveal a beaming Jesse. The kid was wearing a poorly knit holiday sweater, prancing reindeer on a bright, crayon-green background. His left arm was tucked into a sling.

            “I don’t know what to ask about first!” Jimmy said, fighting to keep his grin from taking over his face.

            “Hey to you too. C’mon inside, it’s fucking, like, zero degrees out there.”

            Jimmy stepped inside, kicked off his wet shoes, and followed Jesse upstairs from the landing to the living room.

            “I have some more stuff in the car,” he said. “In case you’re thinking this pile of presents is unimpressive.”

            “You want some help carrying all that?”

            Before Jimmy could answer, Jesse had lifted a few of the Santa-wrapped presents with his good arm. Jimmy was going to thank him, but then he was looking at the living room, the cottony, fake snow dusted mantle, the light-wrapped tree. And were those….

            “Sugar cookies?” Jimmy looked in disbelief at a plate of magazine-worthy cookie creations, frosted to perfection and candy covered.

            “The recipe was pretty easy,” Jesse said modestly, carefully placing the presents underneath the tree.

            “They look amazing, kid. But all this work and yet the ornaments aren’t on the tree? I don’t get it.”

            “Oh.” Jesse glanced at the stacked boxes of ornaments. “I, uh, was waiting so we could decorate the tree together.”

            With great difficulty, Jimmy set the remaining packages under the tree without planting kisses all over Jesse’s pink, embarrassed cheeks. He grabbed a cookie to keep himself busy and felt his eyes widen because damn, that was good.

            “So how’d you break your arm and where’d that sweater come from?” he asked, keeping things light.

            “Old Ms. Dobbs, one of my neighbors, made it for me. Like it?”

            “I’m gonna be upset if you wear anything else before Christmas. I especially like her rendering of Rudolph’s nose.” The famed red nose was a disembodied ball floating a few centimeters above the reindeer. “And the arm, what’s the story there? I should’ve seen the other guy, right?”

            Jesse picked up a cookie and nibbled at the corner.

            “I might’ve fallen off the roof.”

            “Trying to play Santa or something?”

            “No, man. Putting up the lights. I’ve never really done that before and it was, uh, not as easy as I thought it’d be.”

            He’d never put up lights before? And yet here his front yard was, cluttered with enough decorations to enter the city contest. The realization that Jesse had done all of this in anticipation of his arrival was enough to make Jimmy tear up. He cleared his throat and started toward the front door.

            “Well, I’m glad it was just a broken arm. Any worse and I would’ve been suing the Christmas light company.”

            Jesse was laughing. “Suing them for what?”

            “I’d come up with something. Wouldn’t even charge you for all the overtime—it’d be pro-bono.”

            “I’d use the settlement to buy that floating house,” Jesse mumbled, almost too quiet for Jimmy to hear.

            “Want to help me get the rest of the stuff?” Jimmy pretended he hadn’t heard.

            “Sure. Let me, uh, let me find my shoes.”

            As Jimmy pulled his shoes on, he heard Jesse bumping around upstairs. He couldn’t help a little private smile at how much he loved the kid.

            “It’ll just take one trip!” he called in the direction of the noise. Jimmy only had a few possessions in Nevada, most of which he donated right before leaving. He gave Scout to Alfredo, after the younger man said that his nine-year-old daughter had always wanted a fish to care for. Besides some clothes and a toothbrush, he’d only packed his car with presents for Jesse.

            Jimmy carried the gifts while Jesse took care of his suitcase and bathroom bag. They stamped the cold out of their legs in the foyer and Jesse took Jimmy’s things to the room he’d slept in during the previous visit. While Jesse was gone, Jimmy allowed himself a moment to stare at everything Jesse had done for him. He noticed a picture frame on the corner of the mantle, nestled in a puff of fake snow. He picked it up and felt his throat constrict with emotion. It was a picture of him and Jesse, taken a few hours after their tour of the floating home. They were outside a restaurant downtown, arms around each other and faces shining with unsuppressed elation. Jimmy remembered the picture as if the recent months in Nevada didn’t separate him from that moment. Jesse had been the braver of the two, asking a passing woman to take a picture of them with his phone. It was the only picture they had together.

            He set it down before Jesse could come back and sat on the couch.

            “Yo, I got hot cocoa ready. Want some?”

            “That’d be great, Jesse.”

            Jesse returned with two mugs, the big kind with ceramic, bathtub sides. Marshmallows bobbed on top, half-melted into the hot chocolate. Jimmy took one, wrapping both hands around the warm sides gratefully, and realized that he’d been shivering.

            “I’ll start a fire,” Jesse said, setting his mug on the coffee table. “You’re fucking blue.”

            “Hey, don’t make fun of a man’s bad circulation.” Jimmy grabbed a blanket from the other side of the couch and wrapped it around his shoulders. He watched as Jesse struggled to light a match. His brow wrinkled in concentration and his tattooed arm strained as he stuck the match again and again. Jimmy remembered how it felt to trace that tattoo with his fingertips, its asymmetrical edges wet with rain.

            “I missed you,” Jimmy said, drinking a long gulp of hot cocoa to drown his words. Why was he so nervous?

            Jesse tossed a lit match into the pile of newspaper kindling and firewood and looked up. He put the matchbook on the mantle and stood, eyes never leaving Jimmy. The younger man’s fiery blue gaze was so intimate that Jimmy felt his entire body react. He had to focus all his attention on gripping his mug with both palms. Palms that were growing sweatier by the second.

            Jesse reached out and took Jimmy’s mug. He set it on the coffee table next to his own without a word and knelt on the plush carpet in front of the couch so that his face was level with Jimmy’s.

            Without invitation, Jimmy reached out and cupped Jesse’s chin like he had the mug, but fiercer. He pushed against the stubble there, wanting to feel some resistance. The younger man closed his eyes and leaned into Jimmy’s touch. Jimmy could feel Jesse’s breathing grow heavier, and his own heart flopped unevenly. When their lips met in the cinnamon-smelling space between them, he felt the connection as if worlds were colliding.

            Jesse’s lips were soft and his face was rough. Jimmy wanted to keep his hands on the younger man’s face, but he moved on to explore the downy hair on the back of Jesse’s neck and the definition of his shoulders beneath his shirt. Jesse made a growling sound in the back of his throat and Jimmy felt as if a match had been struck somewhere deep within him. Jesse pushed his way onto the couch so that he was straddling Jimmy, their bodies pressed together with all the longing of two months of unwanted separation.

            Jimmy gasped as they broke apart, wanting nothing more than to pull Jesse back in so that they could continue. Jesse’s eyes were half-shut, his breathing ragged but gentle against Jimmy’s parted lips. He laughed, the sound low and rumbling. Jimmy couldn’t help but join in, and as he did Jesse nudged his cheek with his nose.

            “You know how many times I’ve imagined this?” Jimmy whispered.

            “Not as much as me, I bet,” Jesse whispered back, placing the barest of kisses on Jimmy’s forehead. “I, uh,” he looked down at Jimmy’s careful touch on his broken arm, cheeks blooming pink again. This time Jimmy didn’t hesitate to leave kisses all over Jesse’s face, chasing the younger man’s embarrassment away with his lips.

            “Say it, kid,” he urged in a low voice. “You can tell me anything.”

            Jesse met his gaze and gave him a shy smile. “I got something for you.”

            Jimmy waited impatiently while Jesse went to the tree and dug through the pile of presents there. He stood up with a small, poorly wrapped box. Jimmy realized that the younger man had probably worked hard to wrap it with one hand.

            “It’s not much,” Jesse said hurriedly. “It’s not really, like, something I bought, or anything.”

            Jimmy tore the snowflake-speckled paper off as Jesse sat next to him on the couch. He opened a small cardboard box and unfolded a sheet of red tissue paper. A silver key fell into his hand. He didn’t move.

            “When you were here, those were the best weeks of my life. And when you left, those were the worst. I…I don’t want you to leave again. I mean, like, unless you wanna go somewhere else.” Jesse was rambling.

            Jimmy’s eyes watered, still fixed on the key in his hand. Shit, the tears wouldn’t stop, could he brush them away without Jesse seeing? No, he could let Jesse see the full extent of his feelings. He looked up.

            “Say something.”

            “I love you, Jesse.”

            And Jimmy kissed him, letting the key fall into the folds of the blanket. Jesse made a noise of approval as Jimmy pushed him back onto the pillows, gently maneuvering to protect Jesse’s left arm.

            “Wait,” Jesse sighed. “You have to give me a chance, man.”

            “Give you a chance to do what?”

            “To say it back. You never let me say it back!” Jesse said in mock protest.

            “So say it,” Jimmy smiled, kissing the rough line of Jesse’s jaw.

            “Maybe now I don’t want to.” Jesse laughed as Jimmy opened his mouth in derision. He put his hands on the back of Jimmy’s neck so that their foreheads were pressed together. Jimmy felt himself drowning in the blue of Jesse’s eyes, and he never wanted to come up for air.

            “I love you, Jimmy,” Jesse whispered, his voice small and scared and absolutely certain.

            “You got any mistletoe around?” Jimmy wondered.

            “Fuck mistletoe, you can kiss me anytime you want.”

            Jimmy committed this moment to memory. Jesse smiling, reeling him in for another kiss. These were the beautiful, perfect things that he would never take for granted. The promise of today, of tomorrow, of the day after that. The promise of ugly Christmas sweaters, filling the tree with ornaments, the unnecessity of mistletoe. The promise of a silver key that fit the front door.

  



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